Privacy Policy

In brief

• We never sell your personal information.
• A partner sees your name and email address only when you RSVP to their event or send them a request.
• Sponsors receive totals. They never receive your name or contact details.
• Without your OK, we count visits anonymously and set no analytics cookies. Google Analytics, and PostHog remembering you between visits, happen only if you accept.

Information you give us

• Your email address, when you open The Private List or sign in. We sign you in with a one-time code sent to that address, or through Google if you choose. We don’t use passwords.
• Your name, when you RSVP to an event or send a request. Anything else you add to your profile: phone number, neighborhood and interests.
• Your guests’ names and party size, when you RSVP.
• What you send us or a partner, in inquiries and requests, along with your name, email address and phone number.
• Business applications. If you apply as a partner, sponsor or agent, we collect your name, email address, phone number and company. If you start that form and leave without sending it, we may keep the name, email address and option you had already entered.
• Partner and agent details. Partners and agents give us information about their business and team. That includes staff names, titles, email addresses, phone numbers and photos, and an agent’s bio and headshot.
• Payments. Partner and sponsor payments are handled by Stripe. We receive the billing name, email address and address, but never full card numbers. Members are never charged.

Information collected automatically

• How you use the site: pages you view, links you click, how far you scroll and how long you stay.
• Device and connection details: IP address, browser, device type, screen size, language, time zone and the page that referred you.
• Visits from our emails. Some links in our emails are personal to you. When you arrive through one, we set a cookie that connects your later visits to the record we hold about you. We then record the pages you view, with the details above. We also record patterns such as scrolling and pointer movement, which we use to tell people apart from the automated scanners that open email links.
• Where you came from. When you arrive from another website, or through a link carrying campaign tags (for example from our newsletter or a social post), we note that source, the tags and the page you landed on in a cookie that lasts 30 days. If you join, we save it with your membership so we know which of our channels brought you. The cookie holds no information about who you are and is set whether or not you accept analytics.
• Email activity. When you open our weekly edition or click a link in it, our email provider records it. Links in each edition are personal to you, so whoever taps them is recognized as you. If you forward an edition, the person who receives it may be signed in under your email address.

Information from other sources

We also receive personal information that does not come from you directly:

• Data providers. We license marketing lists that include names, email addresses and household information. That information includes city and ZIP code, age range, estimated income, home value and net worth ranges, marital status, investment and charitable-giving indicators, and interests. When you sign up with an email address that matches one of these records, we connect the two.
• Business contact sources. For people who work at businesses we partner with, or would like to, we collect names, job titles, work email addresses, phone numbers and professional profile links. We find these on the business’s own website, on professional networking sites, in published business rankings, and through contact-discovery services.
• Public business content. We collect the posts, photos and videos businesses publish on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other public channels. We also collect real-estate listing information shared by agents, which includes the agent’s name and contact details.
• Public profiles. We collect contact details that businesses and creators publish on their public Instagram profiles.
• Email verification. Verification services tell us whether an email address can receive mail.

How we use information

• To run The Private List: signing you in, showing you partners, offers, events and stories, and keeping track of your saved partners, RSVPs and requests.
• To send email: account and confirmation messages, and our weekly edition. We send the edition to people who ask for it, and also to people whose addresses we obtained from the sources above. Every edition has a link to stop it.
• To pass your RSVPs, requests and inquiries to the partner or agent they are for.
• To contact businesses about becoming a partner or sponsor. We track whether those emails are delivered and answered, and whether they lead to visits to our site.
• To decide what appears on The Private List, and in what order.
• To measure and improve the site, and to produce totals for partners and sponsors.
• To take payments from partners and sponsors.
• To keep the service secure: preventing fraud and abuse, and telling people apart from bots and email scanners.
• To meet our legal obligations.

We use Google’s Gemini AI service to process business content. It summarizes public posts, sorts stories, drafts listing descriptions, and identifies the staff named on business websites. We do not send members’ information to it.

Who we share information with

We never sell your personal information. We share it only as described here.

• Partners. When you RSVP to an event, the partner sees your name, email address, your guests’ names, your party size and the date you replied. When you send a request or inquiry, we pass your name, contact details and message to the partner. Partners also see totals for their page, such as views, RSVPs, offer redemptions and inquiries, which do not identify you.
• Agents. Agents receive inquiries about their own listings directly, with your name, email address, phone number and message.
• Sponsors receive totals and other reports that do not identify you. We never give sponsors your name or contact details.
• Other members never see your information.
• Service providers who run parts of our service for us (listed below). They may use your information only to provide that service.
• For legal reasons: to comply with the law, respond to lawful requests, or protect the rights and safety of our members, partners and the public.
• If our business changes hands: in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, under this policy’s protections.
• With your permission, in any other case.

Our service providers

• Vercel: website hosting and file storage
• Neon: database
• Google Cloud: servers, file storage and scheduled tasks
• Clerk: sign-in and accounts
• Resend: account and confirmation emails
• Brevo: the weekly edition
• Instantly: email to businesses about partnering or sponsorship
• Google Workspace: our own email
• PostHog, Google Analytics: site analytics
• Stripe: payments
• Calendly: booking calls
• Google Gemini: processing business content with AI
• Apollo, Hunter, MillionVerifier: finding and verifying business contacts and email addresses
• Apify: collecting public posts from business accounts

Your information is stored and processed in the United States, and wherever these providers operate.

Cookies and similar technologies

• Necessary. These keep you signed in and remember which city’s site you are on. Our own sign-in cookie lasts up to one year. Clerk, our sign-in provider, sets its own cookies.
• Analytics. PostHog counts every visit: the pages viewed, the site or link a visit came from (including any campaign tags in that link), and what is clicked. Until you choose Accept on our cookie banner, it does this anonymously. It sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser that identifies you, and does not link your visits to you or to any account; to count unique visitors it uses a one-way code that changes every day. If you choose Accept, PostHog also remembers your browser between visits and, if you are a member or reached us through one of our emails, links your visits to you. Google Analytics loads only if you choose Accept. Your choice is saved in your browser. To change it later, clear this site’s data in your browser settings and choose again. Separately from the banner, our servers record a few account events in PostHog, such as creating an account or confirming the weekly edition.
• Email links. The cookie described under “Visits from our emails” lasts 90 days. It is set and used whether or not you accept analytics.
• Where you came from. The cookie described under “Where you came from” lasts 30 days and is never replaced while it lasts. It is set whether or not you accept analytics.

We do not currently respond to Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signals.

Your choices and rights

• Email. Every weekly edition has a link to stop it. Using it also stops any business email we send to that address.
• Your profile. You can change your name, phone number, neighborhood and interests on your profile page at any time.
• Access, correction and deletion. Email privacy@alestercarmichael.com from the address you use with us, and we will respond within 30 days. When we delete your information, we keep only what the law requires and a record of your address so that we never email you again.
• Where you live. Depending on your state, you may have further privacy rights. We will honor them as the law requires.

How long we keep information

We keep personal information while your account is open, or for as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy. After that, we delete it or remove what identifies you. We keep a limited record for longer where the law requires it (for billing and tax, for example), and keep unsubscribed addresses so we never email them again.

Security

Information is encrypted in transit. You sign in with one-time codes instead of passwords. Access is limited to the staff and providers who need it. No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot guarantee that information will never be accessed without permission.

Children

Alester Carmichael is not for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you believe we have, write to privacy@alestercarmichael.com and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we update the date at the top. For significant changes, we will give notice on the site or by email before they take effect.

Contact

ARG Communications, LLC, doing business as Alester Carmichael
23623 N Scottsdale Rd D3 #443, Scottsdale, AZ 85255-3471
privacy@alestercarmichael.com